


A First-Rate Opportunity

by Wrenalynn



Series: Bounce A Coin Bingo Prompts [4]
Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bounce a Coin Off Your Witcher Discord's Bingo, First Meetings, Love at First Sight, M/M, meet cute, soft nonsense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-22
Updated: 2020-09-22
Packaged: 2021-03-08 05:00:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26590006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wrenalynn/pseuds/Wrenalynn
Summary: Geralt has been trying to set his best friend up with his older brother for what seems like forever.Jaskier and Eskel both are bound and determined to avoid Geralt's ridiculous matchmaking.Geralt's not above little white lies and a little trickery to finally force the two of them together.
Relationships: Eskel/Jaskier | Dandelion
Series: Bounce A Coin Bingo Prompts [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1906336
Comments: 23
Kudos: 166
Collections: Bounce A Coin Bingo





	A First-Rate Opportunity

**Author's Note:**

> Soft, silly meet cute one-shot for Jaskel and my bingo prompt "Meet Cute".
> 
> I love you all ;)

~

Geralt was sprawled in true Bi Disaster fashion across an overstuffed chair in the fitting rooms of an upscale clothing boutique; shoulders against one arm, legs thrown over the other arm, phone cradled in front of him, texting away.

_I meant it, Esk… You have to come rescue me from this._

There was some soft humming coming from the stall in front of him, his longtime best friend still preening about in trying on a suit choice. They’d come today to get clothes for his brother’s upcoming wedding. Lambert had finally gotten smart and accepted Aidan’s proposal last year. The ceremony was going to be on their foster Father’s farm in a few weeks, and despite being forced into stupid formalwear, he was really looking forward to it. 

Of course… because of his terrible sentiment towards nicer clothing, he was completely out of his element in trying to figure out what to wear. Enter Jaskier, his flamboyant best friend of the last ten years, and the entire reason he was flopped awkwardly in this chair and texting his other brother. 

The curtain to the dressing stall dramatically whipped to the side and revealed Jaskier in a rather stunning dark blue suit, pale blue shirt, and matching dark blue tie. Geralt set his phone on his belly and tilted his head to the side in consideration.

“It’s a lot of blue.”

Jaskier puffed up his chest and stuck his bottom lip out. “Excuse you! I did not bring you along for your opinions Mr. “I own exactly three henleys all in varying shades of brown”. You got your suit. Now it’s my turn and…” He trailed off and gave another little spin in front of the larger tri-mirror in the main fitting area. “Hmm… No, I guess you’re right. It is a bit too much blue. Maybe a different tie….Or, a lighter suit and a darker shirt… Or!”

“Jaskier! For the love of my sanity, would you stop prattling and settle on something?”

“I’m not listening to you.” He harrumphed and stomped back into the changing stall. If curtains could slam, it would have.

Geralt grinned and turned his attention back to his phone. 

He had been trying to hook Jaskier up with his brother for years now. Despite Lambert, Aidan, and Vesemir all having met the wild child at various functions throughout the years… he still had yet to meet Eskel. The man rarely pulled himself away from his own farm and dairy he had going for him two towns away. Despite his quiet nature, penchant for staying the hell away from society, and the harsh scars down his face from a very unfortunate accident with farming equipment, the man had a deep love for poetry, music, and pulling elaborate pranks on his younger brothers.

Geralt still wondered how exactly he had gotten that bear cub into their dad’s horse trailer that one time…

He sent his location off to Eskel again and hoped beyond hope he’d come save him. And meet the wild upstart.

He got a response back faster than he expected.

_I’m actually down the block. I can be there in five?_

Ohhhhh this was too good.

_Yes! Perfect. I’m dying._

Jaskier had started chattering from inside the stall again.

“I think I’m going to go with the dark red one I had earlier, with the navy blue shirt. I’ll consider ties in a little bit.”

“Whatever you say, Jask. Hey, my brother is going to be here in about half an hour. Think you can help him too?”

“Wha… Lambert? I’d think he already had a tailor being that he’s the _Groom_.”

“Nah, not Lambert. The other one. Eskel.”

Jaskier stuck his face out of the corner of the curtain and glared at him. “Eskel. The one you’ve been trying to convince me to go on a date with for the better part of the last three years? That Eskel?”

“...Yes?”

“Geralt. You had better not be up to anything.” He shook his finger at him as he spoke. “I have been over this with you. Under absolutely no circumstances are you allowed to try anything. If he wants my help honestly, I will help. But there will be no setting us up!”

Geralt held one of his hands up in a Vulcan greeting. “Scout’s honor.”

Jaskier flipped him off and ducked back behind the curtain. Rustling noises followed.

“You were never a scout, you nerdy bastard.”

“You’re the one that got that reference. Why are you back in there? I thought you chose already.”

“I did. But now I get to have a little fun. I may have snuck something else in here because it is my pansexual given right to be dramatic.”

Geralt rolled his eyes and himself out of the chair. “Whatever you say, Jaskier.” 

His phone pinged. Eskel was here.

“Hey, I’m just gonna run to the bathroom. I’ll be back, okay?”

“Yeah, yeah.”

He beelined it for the front of the store and found Eskel looking disoriented by the entryway mannequins. 

“There you are!” 

Eskel turned and smiled at him, reaching out and giving Geralt a hug once he was in reach.

“Hey there. Anytime, bro. What’s up? Why do you need such desperate saving?”

“Oh, it’s just Jaskier. He’s taking forever. I just want to pay for my suit and leave.”

Eskel squinted slightly at him at the mention of Jaskier. “Oh? And this needs my help, why? I already have my suit, you fashion-blind caveman.”

Geralt waved his hand as if to shoo away Eskel’s worries. “I’ve got another place to be, okay. I’ve got a date in an hour and I need to kick dirt away from here. Please, _please,_ help me out here?”

Eskel rolled his eyes and sighed heavily. “Alright, alright. But you owe me. Like… a lot.”

Geralt clapped his hand against his brother’s shoulder and grinned widely. “You’re the best. He’s back in the changing rooms. Just take a seat in that big overstuffed monstrosity of a waiting chair. He already knows, so don’t worry.” 

And with that oddly inflected last sentence, Geralt was gone. Off to the register to pay for his suit and bolt as fast as possible. Nothing for it, Eskel guessed.

He walked slowly back towards the fitting area, admiring the suits and dresses he saw about the store. It was a pretty swanky place. Part of the reason he was curious as to why he found Geralt here at all. Had to be the influence of that odd little best friend of his he keeps trying to foist on him. He’d been at it for at least the last two years, trying to convince him to come out to more events and check out the local music scene. 

It wasn’t that he was against going out… it was just that he’d be damned if he let his little brother convince him who he should date. He was just fine with his goats and his little farm.

The chair Geralt mentioned was indeed very overstuffed and looked like it had been slept in by many a weary husband. He plunked himself down and wiggled as far back as he could to draw his crossed legs up as well. There was soft humming coming from the changing stall directly in front of him. He assumed that was Jaskier.

He was, however, completely unprepared for what happened next. 

“I am so happy for Lambert, I really am,” came a voice from the stall, “but it is an absolute travesty that there will be no spectacular flowing gowns at this little shindig. Therefore, I have decided that as my last little bit of fun today, I will pretend I get to be a dashing bride myself! Tah, dah!”

The curtain of the room in front of him was dramatically tossed to the side and out sashayed a hirsute demigod of a man dressed in a flowing emerald green formal gown. One leg posed just out of the slit up the skirt for effect and Eskel stared dumbfounded. 

One shoulder was entirely bare, and the other was cased in a sleeve that flowed all the way to the hem of the dress, just brushing the floor. The entire thing moved like liquid against the man’s frame and Eskel was hard pressed to drag his gaze all the way up to meet twin stunned eyes the color of the shifting ocean. So this was Jaskier...

Jaskier made a slightly cut off squawk in the back of his throat and went rigid.

“You’re not Geralt.”

“N-” Eskel tried to say, but his voice caught in his throat. He tried to clear it and start again. “No...hm. No, I’m not.”

The tension in Jaskier’s body didn’t ease and he took a hesitant step back towards the stall he had burst out of. His eyes didn’t leave Eskel’s at all.

“I, uh…. That doesn’t actually tell me anything. Who are you?”

Eskel shifted to put his feet back down on the ground. “I’m Eskel. And… I take it you must be Jaskier?”

Jaskier blinked rapidly and then swiftly turned beet red everywhere Eskel could see. “Oh that utter, absolute bastard!”

Eskel laughed. “I have to agree with you there. He said… Oh….” It was Eskel’s turn to blink and start to blush. “Oh, that liar! He told me you knew I was going to be here.”

“Yeah… in half an hour. When I had firmly found my clothes, paid, and would be well on my way absolutely anywhere else.”

Eskel’s face dropped a bit at that. It didn’t matter that he too had been avoiding playing into Geralt’s little matchmaker machinations, it still hurt to be rejected so. He stood up abruptly, eyes to the ground.

Jaskier immediately felt like an ass. “Oh, Eskel, no… I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like that. I just… I mean… Geralt’s been pushing at me for a few years now, trying to convince me to go on a date with you or meet you or something. He’s been so pushy it’s made me firmly want to stay the hell away…” He moved a few more steps forward, towards the other man.

Eskel let out the breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. “I was the same, honestly. He’s always talking you up. Trying to convince me to come out to live music gigs in town, when he knows I have a dairy farm to run more than an hour away…” He rolled his eyes with a fond laugh.

The tension in the air suddenly dropped and Jaskier chuckled with him. “I can’t believe it. He was trying to get you to come see me perform. That ass…”

“Complete and total, if we’re being honest.”

Jaskier shifted his weight onto one hip and crossed his arms over his chest, setting the entire dress to swaying again and threatening to cause Eskel to completely lose the thread of the conversation. He smirked as he watched the larger man’s focus shift quickly to his form.

“If we’re being honest.” Jaskier started. “I have to say…. I’m sorry I fought him so hard on it.”

Eskel made a Hmm noise of assent in the back of his throat as his eyes trailed down the other’s exposed leg.

“Yeah… Me too… Wait, what?” His eyes snapped up to Jaskier’s and saw nothing but open appreciation in them as the other man also swept his gaze over him. 

“Let me ask you a question, hmm?”

“Yes, anything.” 

“I truly had no plans after this. I was going to make something up to escape Geralt’s scheming.” He shifted his weight back to the other hip and the leg disappeared in the swaths of cloth. “But… I think I would rather get dressed, finish paying for what I’m actually going to wear to the wedding, and then I would absolutely love to get some ice cream with you, if you wouldn’t mind?”

“You aren’t going to wear that? Shame.”

The laughter that poured from Jaskier was infectious, and soon Eskel joined him in the giggling.

“No, dear, I’m not. Wouldn’t want to distract from the people actually getting married.” He took a hesitant step back. “Will you stay there for a moment while I change?”

With a dazzling smile, Eskel nodded.

The pair spoke nothing of their day to Geralt. Each texting him a completely different story of how their day went, all while sitting next to each other in Jaskier’s four-poster bed, giggling over how frustrated they knew Geralt would feel at thinking his plan had failed.

They kept in constant contact over the next few weeks, and come the actual day of the wedding, avoided each other entirely during the ceremony.

They ‘bumped’ into each other at the buffet table during the reception and pretended with great skill to get to know one another and fall for each other independent of any of Geralt’s pushing.

As they spun each other around the dance floor, Geralt sat nearby with a gleam in his eye and a pout on his face. The secret romantic in his heart had wished so strongly to be the force that finally pulled them together. His boyfriend, Regis, reached over and patted his arm. 

“It’s alright, dear. It may not have been at your hands, but they did meet each other in the end.”

“Ugh, that’s not the point!” He whined. “I mean… sure. I’m happy for them. Look at them, so damned cute together. The point is that I saw it! I knew they’d be like this if they just _listened to me._ ”

Regis just patted his arm again and refilled his wine glass. “I know, dear.”

Eskel and Jaskier were too determined to not let it out that Geralt was entirely to blame for their actual meeting, that it wasn’t until nearly five years later that the cat finally got out of the bag.

Jaskier was three glasses of Lambert’s eggnog deep and draped across Eskel’s lap. Aidan was on the other side of the couch prodding at Jaskier’s thigh with his big toe.

“Come ooonnnn…. we need a new story… you never told us about your first date! Tell us that!”

Eskel squinted at him, but had also had a number of eggnogs and was not going to argue too much. Jaskier sighed dramatically and gestured at the room with his glass.

“Alright, you’ve convinced me. Wait… is Geralt here?”

“What? I mean… no he’s in the kitchen...why?” Aidan squinted in confusion.

“No reason!” He chirped happily and sat up a little more. “So. It all began a little over five years ago….”

Lambert looked up at that and raised a brow. “Our anniversary isn’t until next week… I thought you met at the wedding?”

“Shh, darling I’m talking.” 

“Ass.”

Behind him, out of eyeshot, Geralt came back into the doorway wiping his hands on a dish towel. He tilted his head to listen. He hadn’t heard this story before. 

“Like I was saying… it all started a little over five years ago when I was shopping for the very suit I would end up wearing to your lovely wedding… I was trying on a beautiful green dress… for funzies, you know, as you do…. and decided I must burst forth from the dressing room in my most majestically dramatic fashion. Well, imagine my surprise when it was not my dear best friend, but instead this lovely specimen beneath me! After a brief moment of shock and surprise, I just knew I had to ask this darling man out then and there….”

“ _Sonuva Bitch!!”_

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this unedited in one evening after wringing the entire idea out of my wine-soaked brain.  
> Be gentle.
> 
> And as always, look for more! I still have five more prompts to do!


End file.
